Monitoring applications can be configured to alert an end-user when a certain monitored resource exceeds or drops below a pre-defined threshold. These thresholds are typically determined by observing the use of the system for a period of time. The implications of this approach are:
1. It is impractical to expect frequent manual intervention by an administrator on long running or complex systems. Therefore alerts are not driven frequently and are typically only driven when a critical system failure occurs.
2. Due to performance or storage constraints the gathering of diagnostic information does not occur continually. When an alert is triggered there is frequently very little historical diagnostic information available.
This leads to the following problems:
1. A lack of historical diagnostic data makes problem diagnosis difficult, so the operator does not know what actions to take to resolve the problem.
2. The systems administrator tends to react to problems after they occur rather than identify potential problems in advance.
The applicant thus believes that it is desirable to have an automated apparatus and method for causing the provision of appropriate historical diagnostic data when an operator alert is driven.